


The Land that Makes Us Refugees

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Culture Shock, Drama, F/M, Garrus is confused, Human Culture, Humor, In which punk music lasts forever, Introspection, Mordin is awesome, Music, PTSD, Thousands are Sailing, turian culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 11:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14471517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: A simple argument about music abruptly reminds Garrus Vakarian just how little he knows or understands about humanity. Fortunately, Mordin is there to help the confused turian find his place on this new, Cerberus-centric Normandy. A little humor, a little drama, some character study, and a bit of romance to top it off.





	The Land that Makes Us Refugees

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about the differences between human and turian culture, especially as regards Garrus's visor playlist, and this idea seized me and wouldn't let go. If turians are a warrior culture, humans are an immigrant culture, and I think they would remember that as they took their first steps into space. 
> 
> The song referenced is "Thousands are Sailing," by the Pogues. In my mind, one of the best songs about the immigrant experience ever made, and one which fit my FemShep especially well.
> 
> Also, I've noticed an increasing tendency in my fics for Garrus to either throw things at krogans, or get things thrown at him by krogans. Considering the history between the turian and krogan peoples, I would argue that this is actually a sign of improved diplomatic relations.

Too many things had changed since the _Normandy_ SR-1 was destroyed. The old crew had scattered to the four winds, and their new replacements on this Cerberus vessel wore the black, white, and orange with an ease that Shepard's nonhuman allies could find unsettling. The old Shepard was, in some ways, gone too: this new model was more tired, more scarred, more bent under the weight of her responsibilities.

But some things hadn't changed. Whatever the ship, Octavia Shepard cared about her crew (and Spirits help you if you tried to stop her). She checked on everyone's accommodations, scheduled shore leave as regularly as possible, made it her first priority to upgrade the med bay, and bullied Mess Sergeant Gardner into taking the ham and pea soup off the menu before more people ended up in said med bay. And, whether the old _Normandy_ or the new, Shepard insisted on regular meals with her entire ground team present. Come 1800 hours Galactic Standard Time, the first of the mess shifts would be sitting down to dinner—including Shepard and her closest allies.

Despite the fact that dextro rations tasted the same no matter where or when he ate them, Garrus went along with the “shared meals” plan. Shepard had done the same thing on the old _Normandy_ , and he'd been skeptical then (sharing a breakroom at C-Sec had simply taught him to loathe everything about his fellow officers, including the way Meritrius slurped his louza, and Spirits help him Garrus was going to shoot him if it happened _one. More. Time_ ), but he'd be damned if it hadn't worked out. He was probably safe in claiming he was the only turian alive to have thrown a levo bread roll at a krogan battlemaster and lived to tell the tale. So when 1800 GST rolled around, he'd take his dextro meal pack and join the rest of the field team in the mess.

To his surprise, this group had pulled together even more quickly than the old one had. Maybe it was the difference in their circumstances: the old team had been half Alliance, with the certainty of an organization and a creed to back them up, but now almost everyone in Shepard's new group was a solo act with no support system. Assassin, biotic experiment, tank-bred krogan, thief, justicar, mercenary, mad scientist. Miranda and Jacob, who were visibly connected to an organization, were the odd ones out. Most of the team had had little to cling to before, and when Shepard offered an unexpected source of strength, they found it hard to resist her. The shared meals were not exactly heartwarming bonding experiences, but conversation flowed easily and nobody had been stabbed with any cutlery.

(Garrus had not, however, attempted to repeat the bread roll trick with Grunt. He liked his mandibles where they were, thanks.)

Today's work on the Thanix had taken longer than he anticipated, and it was almost 1830 when he left the battery and loped down the corridor towards the mess. He could already smell Gardner's offering for the day—a favorite of the crew, owing to it being (in Joker's words) “idiot-proof.” It was some kind of noodles in a reddish sauce, with lumps of reconstituted meat product formed into little balls. It didn't smell too bad, either, which was an unexpected bonus where levo food was concerned. For him and Tali, there would be freeze-dried tikla with mal'ut paste, the tail ends of several crates of quarian-friendly dextro rations bought from the Migrant Flotilla. Plus a lead supplement for him, to keep his plates sleek and radiation-proof.

Shepard had apologized several times for the lack of good dextro food. It seemed that when cultivating its contacts and making its plans, the human supremacist organization had somehow neglected to plan for non-levo crewmembers, and the stuff Shepard could scare up tended to vary in quality. Garrus laughed it off: after the two-year living nightmare that had been Omega, a semi-tasteless quarian ration was not exactly something that could ruin his day.

When he stepped into the mess, however, he found himself suddenly in the middle of an argument. Tali was standing up, stabbing her finger at a smug-looking Miranda, her own dextro ration forgotten on the table. Jacob was sitting back with an expression that, even on a human, practically screamed “Please don't notice me, I don't want to be part of this”, while Grunt was taking advantage of the distraction to steal part of Miranda's meal. At the head of the table, Shepard appeared to be torn between exasperation and amusement.

“Oh, Keelah! You're finally here! You agree with me, right?” Tali called out. Garrus stopped in his tracks, suddenly wary. If there was one thing having a sister had taught him, it was that getting involved in arguments between females was never a good idea.

“Are you really so desperate for support that you'll grab a turian?” Miranda scoffed. “They're not exactly a musical race.”

“This from a human! Whatever _you_ consider musical _—“_

“Don't change the subject, Tali'zorah—“

Now thoroughly confused, Garrus took his seat and began to peel open the dextro ration pack. “I must have missed a briefing,” he said to Shepard. “What's going on?”

“Tali and Miranda started arguing about _Fleet and Flotilla,”_ Shepard replied. “Miranda thinks it's sentimental and illustrative of … something-or-other. I couldn't keep up, because Tali squawked and then demanded an apology, which didn't happen.”

“Shepard, you don't really expect me to apologize for someone else's lack of taste—“

“Lack of taste? You're the one who said it was _trite garbage—_ “

“Well, it's hardly poetry—“

Shepard grimaced as the argument picked up again. “I feel like a babysitter,” she confided to Garrus.

“Please let that just be a human word my translator didn't catch.”

“A caretaker of small, whining infants.”

“That's not fair,” Garrus said. “Nobody could call them small.” Shepard snorted a little, and Garrus smiled as he fished out the first chunk of dried tikla.

Across the table, the argument was getting heated. Samara, of all people, had been roped in—something about Tali wanting another woman's perspective—and was wearily repeating that the Code of the Justicars had very little to say about music or musicals. Miranda was refusing to budge. Finally, Tali let out a despairing wail. “Doesn't _anyone_ on this ship have good taste?”

“It's a human ship,” Grunt pointed out flatly. Garrus laughed out loud, and even Thane let out a dry chuckle. Shepard shot Garrus an arch look before turning to Grunt.

“And what's that supposed to mean?” she asked.

Grunt shrugged. “Humans are weird. It's a fact.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Garrus winced. A woman saying “I beg your pardon” was even worse than “what's that supposed to mean,” and hinted at the possibility of the deeply ominous “I don't like your tone.” That, he'd found, was true of many species, including both humans and turians. (He'd had an opportunity to study a human example on the day Bailey's now-ex-wife had stormed C-Sec with a fully-loaded assault toddler.)

But on the other hand, he couldn't help chuckling as well, even as Grunt dug himself into a deeper hole through a mix of krogan superiority and sheer incomprehension. Shepard probably wasn't _really_ angry, but even though she loathed Cerberus's attitude of Humans First, Aliens Nowhere, she could be surprisingly tetchy about what her species did have to offer.

It really wasn't fair to Grunt, though. The tank-bred hadn't had nearly enough experience to understand what he was getting himself into, let alone win any kind of argument with Shepard.

“You're getting off topic,” Garrus called out, as Shepard finished verbally cornering a deeply confused Grunt. “Humans _are_ weird. You're short and soft and don't have fringes or crests. And let's be honest, your music _does_ stink.”

Tali slapped the table. “ _See?”_ she said triumphantly to Miranda, who scoffed. Shepard refocused on Garrus, much to the visible relief of Grunt and the amusement of the rest of the table.

“This from the guy whose playlist is nothing but 'Die for the Cause' and club remixes?”

“You know where you stand with club music,” Garrus retorted as he bit off another chunk of tikla. “It's got a beat and you can time your headshots along with the bass line. Even humans can't mess up club music.”

Shepard laughed. “You're seriously rating our music by whether you can kill people to it?”

“Face it, Shepard,” Garrus said mock-sadly. “You're just not a musical species.”

She smiled at him. Then, to his surprise, she turned away. “You're going to regret that,” she said as she looked up at the ceiling. “EDI? Patch me through to engineering.”

“Ma'am?” came the voice of Engineer Daniels a moment later.

“Daniels. Is Donnelly there?”

“Yes'm!” another voice chimed in, this one male and accented in a way Garrus's translator wasn't sure what to do with. “Reading you loud and clear, commander!”

“Donnelly.” Shepard was definitely smiling, with a twinkle in her eye Garrus wasn't sure he liked. “I've got a turian here who thinks humans aren't musical.”

“That bastard,” Donnelly said promptly. “Where do we start, then? I've got my bagpipes in me footlocker, but not while I'm on duty, I'm thinkin'.”

“Just give us a tune you can manage while keeping both hands on your work. The Alliance's favorite.”

“Aye, right.” Donnelly cleared his throat.

Garrus quickly held up both hands, signaling surrender. “I give, I give!” he said. “Please don't make the engineer sing. I don't want to crash because you made the engineer sing.”

But it was too late. Donnelly was singing, and Garrus's plates prickled at the sound.

 

_The island, it is silent now_

_But the ghosts still haunt the waves_

_And a torch lights up a famished man_

_Who fortune could not save_

 

“EDI, I want this broadcast to the whole ship,” Shepard was saying. Garrus had no idea what the hell she was doing, but to his shock, another voice was already joining the song. He looked across and saw Mess Sergeant Gardner, paused in the middle of stacking plates, a grin on his face, singing.

 

_Did you work upon the railroads?_

_Did you rid the streets of crime?_

 

More voices. Garrus turned, baffled, to see that Jacob— _Jacob,_ the one who'd tried to stay out of the argument—was singing along with Donnelly and Gardner. The man gave him a slightly defiant look and raised his voice. From the sound on the comm, Daniels had joined in too, for Spirits only knew what reason.

 

_Were your dollars from the White House_

_Or were they from the five-and-dime?_

_Did the old songs taunt or cheer you_

_And did they still make you cry?_

_Did you count the months and years_

_Or did your teardrops quickly dry?_

 

“This isn't the Alliance anthem, is it?” said Tali, a little puzzled by the direction events had taken. Garrus wasn't sure at all. He'd heard the Alliance anthem before, he thought, but this didn't sound anything like it. Yet the whole ship seemed to know it.

No, not the whole ship. Just the humans. Glancing around the table, he saw Tali looking confused, Samara tilting her head with stoic silence, Thane apparently lost in some memory, Grunt amused by the strange turn of events. Jacob was singing, and Kasumi was humming along, softly, the bare glint of her eyes somehow distant. Zaeed was thumping his fist on the table and singing lustily, with more life than Garrus had seen the man exhibit outside of a firefight.

 

_Ah, no, says he, 'twas not to be_

_On a coffin ship I came here_

_And I never even got so far_

_That they could change my name!_

 

Turian music was, like most other aspects of turian life, deeply communal and martial. Different platoons in training would often participate in competitive, ritual drum exhibitions, and the most common form of music was the chorus or chanted cadence. It felt right: clean, solid, and all-enveloping, a thousand voices blending together to share a single melody.

The aberration known as _minor key_ was rare in turian music, and for damned good reason: with ears already tuned to catch the subtleties of primary and secondary vocals, minor key tended to make turians deeply uncomfortable. It felt like a betrayal of the intended sound, a corruption of the chorus, and would only be used in rare cases of extreme mourning.

So naturally, humans loved it.

Now the massed voices were rising, twisting into that minor key. He could feel it vibrating in his plates, burrowing into his ear: a lament with the energy and beat of a march. He could feel the chorus echoing through the ship.

And there was Commander Shepard, a strange look on her face as she sang with the rest.

 

_Thousands are sailing across the western ocean_

_To a land of opportunity that some of them will never see_

_Fortune prevailing across the western ocean_

_Their bellies full, their spirits free_

_They'll break the chains of poverty_

_And they'll dance!_

 

There was more to it, but Garrus had stopped making out the individual words. It certainly wasn't the Alliance anthem. But half the ship was singing now, all words of sorrow and defeat and defiance, and his ears were ringing and his plates felt like they were going to jump off his skin and Zaeed looked like he was taking notes on just how uncomfortable this was making Garrus.

When the song stopped, and Donnelly was being ushered off the comm with a round of applause from the human crewmen, Garrus belatedly came back to himself. To his surprise, Thane and Tali were applauding along with the humans: Thane a slow, respectful clap, and Tali practically beating her hands on the table, cheering for an encore in a voice that sounded distinctly teary. She seemed to have happily reversed her position on human music. Samara's expression was thoughtful; Kasumi, seemingly having realized that she'd spoiled her posture of detached, humorous cool, activated her tactical cloak and vanished with Jacob's dessert; Jack was shaking her head, laughing at everyone else.

“All right,” Shepard was saying, turning to him. “What was that about humans not being musical, wise-ass?”

Garrus shook his head again. It felt like he had water trapped under his plates: an itchy, sticky feeling of his balance being subtly off.

“… I forgot to compile some code,” he said, and retreated from the mess. A burst of laughter followed him.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later, when EDI had informed him that the area was safely clear of human crewmembers, Garrus peered out of the battery. The itchy feeling under his plates hadn't gone away: in fact, it was only getting worse, and it wasn't doing anything for his nerves. Hard to modify firing algorithms when he couldn't keep his mind on his work.

He thought about going to see Dr. Chakwas. Had all that screechy singing affected his inner ear somehow, maybe? A nasty thought: as a sniper, he couldn't afford to have his hearing and balance compromised. But Dr. Chakwas was, well … human. She'd probably been singing along with the rest of them, and might not understand what could be affecting him.

The feeling in his plates was only getting worse. He couldn't put a finger on what it was, and it was driving him a little crazy.

Finally, he put up his work and went to the tech lab.

Mordin Solus was there, of course. When was he not? Garrus had it on good authority that the doctor had a cot in the back, crammed in somewhere between two banks of diagnostic equipment and rarely used. Salarians lived short, sharp lives, and seemed to resent the time wasted on sleeping or eating.

Garrus hadn't often crossed paths with the doctor, even though they'd both been working on Omega at the same time. A few of his squad members had gone to the clinic once or twice, and though they reported that Dr. Solus probably wouldn't give them over to the gangs, Garrus simply didn't trust anyone outside his team. In the beginning, he hadn't even trusted his team. Going to a doctor? Too risky. For two long years, he'd scraped along with medi-gel, stimpacks, and sheer hardheadedness.

Now, though, Mordin almost seemed like a friend. There was something familiar about the salarian's constant muttering and humming: it brought back nights in the Archangel hideout, with the team gathered around to fix their equipment and plot their next move. It was comfortable in that communal way that turians understood and Shepard seemed to try approximating with her crew.

“Garrus Vakarian,” Mordin greeted him. The elderly salarian was, as usual, doing at least three things at once: typing on a projected keyboard, swiping through multiple screens with his free hand, humming a tune Garrus didn't recognize, and glancing over at a mysterious black lump of organic material that was bubbling inside a transparent box on the work table. Garrus had no idea what that was all about, and he didn't want to ask. “Outside your normal hours. Difficulty with equipment?”

“Possibly.”

Garrus shot a look at the gently glowing terminal opposite the door. He hadn't used it much himself, but he was familiar with it: the hub of a system Mordin had created to coordinate various tech projects and ship upgrades. The various experts on the ship would upload their projects, and Shepard would review them all and allocate resources as best she could. Since she'd given the okay to the Thanix, though, he hadn't bothered to look at the other projects still on the slate. Now he was wondering.

“Tell me,” he said slowly. His thoughts weren't at all in order and his plates still felt strange, but in the familiar sterile busyness of the lab, his nerves were at least settling a little. “Has anyone been researching a … sonic weapon? Or a sonic shield, maybe? Something that could affect someone's inner ear?”

Mordin's mouth creased, and he tilted his head. “No,” he said. “Sonics ineffective field of study under current parameters. Some extant research on Collector communications—frequencies, language, integration of organic material into tech. Most work focused on ship and personnel enhancement. Why? Suggestion?”

“No. It's not exactly my area of expertise.” Garrus shrugged one shoulder. “Did you hear the crew singing?”

That made Mordin chuckle. “Indeed! Fascinating moment. Glad to have been part of it. Not to my taste—prefer patter songs—but still, happy to hear. Shared moment of camaraderie, experience, trust. Entirely appropriate when facing enemy without soul.”

“Well, it wasn't the kind of thing turians sing, I can tell you that.” Garrus shifted, scratched awkwardly at one of the plates on his shoulder. The uncomfortable sensation was still there, though it was less so here in the lab. Some interference from the equipment, probably. “Maybe there's some physiological connection? A difference between species? Because ever since they started screeching about ships and things, there seems to be something wrong with my nervous system. I thought maybe a sonic—”

“Indeed?” Mordin quickly turned away from his console. He grabbed Garrus's arm and half-pushed, half-dragged him towards the nearest table. “Interesting! Sit, sit. Will examine.”

As Garrus sat, the doctor bustled around him, collecting tools and calling up files on his omni-tool. Several were of quite detailed dissections of turian brains. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, especially since at least one of the dissections appeared to be a photo taken in an Omega clinic.

Mordin, though, didn't immediately come at him with a knife. Instead, the salarian scanned him, examined his ears and eyes, took copious notes, and began to mutter to himself as he prodded the edges of the bandage covering Garrus's damaged facial plates.

“No apparent physical ailment,” Mordin concluded after a few moments. “Absent preexisting conditions, of course. Nervous system in state of heightened activity, but well within previously-recorded parameters. Please describe symptoms.”

Garrus shifted. He felt a little embarrassed now. “My ears were ringing when they sang,” he said. “Probably just the minor key—“

“Ah, yes, turian reaction to certain frequencies well-documented. Comparable to 'varren-whistle' phenomenon.”

“And my plates were prickling. Especially in my shoulders and back.” He tapped his fingers against the plating at the base of his neck, between his shoulderblades. And ever since then, I've felt jumpy and off-balance. Like a heightened panic response.”

“Indeed? Fascinating, fascinating.” Mordin projected a new keyboard from his omni-tool and began to type rapidly. “Never explored anything quite like this before. Still, very little extant data on turian/human interactions on shared vessels. Not entirely surprising to encounter this response.”

Now Garrus was a little lost. “What?”

“Unsurprising,” Mordin repeated. “Injured combatant still healing. Post-traumatic stress. Seeking normal, familiar, sense of safety.” He shook his head. “High-stress missions create bond with commander, crew, ship. Disturbed to find commander changed, crew different, ship new. Dislike change.”

“I'm not a child, doctor—” Garrus began. The doctor tsked and cut him off.

“Not a child! Turian. Turian culture stresses community, authority, sharing responsibility. Loyalty to commanding officer. Now reminded of changes. Feeling loss of place. Reminded of being only one turian in the middle of humans. Feeling that friends have sided with humans against you. Distress, concern, sadness, fear, paranoia, potential homicidal tendencies—“

“We're in a war. You expect us to be whistling a happy tune?”

“Have to try,” Mordin said bluntly. “Otherwise, pointless.”

“Look, this doesn't make sense,” Garrus insisted. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he did his best to ignore it. “Nothing went wrong until Donnelly started singing that song. There must be some kind of—“

Mordin snorted. “Hrm. Denial. Also unsurprising. Turians not noted for innovative approach to self-awareness.”

Garrus's mandibles flared instinctively. “If this is going to be another culture argument, spare me. I've had enough of those tonight.”

“Hardly. Simply analyzing. You bring problem, I provide answer.” Mordin rapped him, hard, on his crest. “Think! Lost your team. Lost half your face. Damaged. Seeking comfort, familiarity, rapport with commander. Place in _Normandy_ hierarchy. _But!_ Surrounded by humans who don't like nonhumans. Instinctively discomforted to see friends having bonds with xenophobes. Sharing jokes, meals, songs with xenophobes.” He sucked in air through his teeth. “Doesn't bother _me_. Accustomed to working alone. Rather like it that way. Friends unreliable, prone to getting selves killed. But turians communal, martial. Lone turian doesn't like being reminded of situation. Doesn't like seeing commander in shared experience he doesn't understand. Feels locked out. Mental distress, sublimated trauma, manifests in physical discomfort.”

“Come on,” Garrus protested. “You're overthinking this. I need a cure, not a psych appointment.”

“Disagree. Both quite useful. Still—worth considering.” Mordin tapped his chin, thinking. “Surprised you haven't heard the song before, honestly. Quite popular among humans. Not to my taste, but understand why they like it.”

Garrus shrugged uncomfortably. “That makes one of us.”

“Think about it. Old song. Immigrants crossing the ocean. Very harsh conditions. Many died. Didn't have to.” Mordin gave another sharp inhale. “Survivors arrived. Work hard for little reward. Missing and hating the old country. Fighting with those already arrived. 'Celebrate the land that makes us refugees.'”

Garrus hadn't heard that line when the song was sung. His ears had been ringing too badly for that. “What?”

“Last refrain.” Mordin hummed the tune. Without the chorus behind it, it was an eerie sound, and Garrus's ears twinged. “ _Where e'er we go, we celebrate/ The land that makes us refugees/ From fear of priests with empty plates/ From guilt and weeping effigies …'_ ” He cut himself off with a short chuckle. “Superstition. Fragments of old religion causing new neuroses. Unsurprising in humans—live long enough to make many mistakes.”

No wonder Tali had been applauding, Garrus thought. Immigrants, sailing to a new land but mourning the old. Except Tali didn't have a new land to look forward to, just like the humans in the song hadn't been certain they'd even arrive.

Quarians as refugees? Absolutely. Garrus would be surprised if the quarians _didn't_ have a dozen songs like that one. But _humans?_

Humans were the opposite of refugees. Humans were loud, disorganized, intrusive, and impossible to avoid. Humans had barged into the galaxy the same way they barged into Relay 314, and caused just as much damage. They had no sense of community or hierarchy to define them. They didn't even mate for life! Instead, they clumped together and broke apart apparently on a whim, and took up more space and made more noise than you ever would have thought possible.

Back at C-Sec, phrases like “first human councilor” had been a running gag. “Two drunks smashing windows in Zakera Ward. I think one of 'em's the first human councilor!” Slang for a species that made a lot of mess and demanded responsibility that they, in the eyes of the Council and C-Sec, hadn't earned and wouldn't be given.

“How ancient is that song, anyway?” he said. Probably not the most pertinent question to ask, but he didn't like the direction his thoughts were going, and he had to say something. “Haven't they … I don't know, gotten over it by now?”

Mordin pursed his lips, thinking. “Hmm. Human calendar difficult to convert. Song created approximately at the same time as Aria T'Loak took control of Omega. Events of coffin ships occurred approximately one hundred to one hundred and fifty Earth years prior to that time.”

That gave Garrus pause. He had assumed the song was much more ancient than that. It was, after all,a throwback to a time when crossing an _ocean_ was considered _dangerous._ Crossing an ocean—something that could be done in minutes in any decent shuttle today. Any decent shuttle from hundreds of years ago, come to that.

But no. It seemed that humans were closer to the ancient times than he'd realized. He knew it on a surface level, of course—the Relay 314 Incident (“First Contact War,” hah) served as a constant reminder that humans were a new addition to the galactic community. But it was jarring to remember just how short the timeline was. Humans had gone from “coffin ships” to starships in the time it took an asari to decide that she was done with her dancing career. And unlike many other species, they had barely set foot off-planet before joining the galactic wars.

Was that how humans felt, then? That they were sailing into the unknown, on ships that could be their coffins?

Was that how Shepard felt?

And then he remembered that day: filling out his new Spectre application, looking up when his terminal chimed with an impossibly terse message from Liara. _Check the extranet. It's on every channel._

 _Alliance frigate_ Normandy _confirmed destroyed over Alchera._

A coffin ship. A graveyard for more than just Shepard. And of all the dead on Alchera, she alone had been dug up again, to gather another crew and fill another potential coffin full of friends in the desperate need to save even more lives from this threat that was dragging distant, bare-bones human colonies into the dark.

He knew that. He knew about desperation and doing what had to be done. He knew, like every turian, about dying for the cause. And he knew, now, about what it was like to lose an entire team under his command, and sit up in the darkness wondering whether everything would have been better if he'd never been born.

He knew how his heart had squeezed in his chest at the sight of that familiar N7 armor, and that smile when she saw him take his helmet off. A shared relief: seeing each other alive again, against all hopes. Her, lost to death. Him, lost in a galaxy that had betrayed him by letting her fall.

“Spirits,” he murmured.

“Not spirits,” Mordin corrected. “Ghosts. Memories of the dead. Recalling the past to influence the future. _'Break the chains of poverty.'”_

Ghosts and memories. Holding tight to the story of past struggles and failures. Sharing stories, sharing meals, sharing camaraderie. Making a group out of criminals and the lost.

Out of refugees.

He hadn't quite thought of himself as being so alone, and it had stung him. It still stung him, even as he clambered down from the table where Mordin had sat him and stood uncertainly, flexing his shoulders and feeling the nervous flutter in his plates that reminded him, now, of watching the Archangel team disperse across Omega and wondering which of them would come back alive.

“If you tell Shepard about this,” he began a little hopelessly.

Mordin waved away the implied, half-formed threat like a fly. “Ridiculous! Patient confidentiality. Would not say anything unless mission performance completely compromised.” Another sharp breath. “However, suggest speaking to Shepard. Turian always prefers commander to mere medic.”

 

* * *

 

He didn't speak to Shepard.

At least, not that night.

Two months later, as their sweat cooled in the blue-lit captain's cabin and Shepard sighed, letting out one of those soft breaths that made his heart twist in his chest, he nuzzled his mandibles against the soft curve of her neck and said “You know, humans scare me.”

A soft huff of breath against the edges of his fringe. Laughter in her throat. “Is this your version of pillow talk, big guy?”

“Sorry. Should I go back to complimenting your fringe?”

At that, a soft human hand trailed up the back of his neck to caress the plates at the base of his own fringe and _oh, yes, Spirits, keep doing that for the next hundred years, please._ He couldn't hold back a pleased purr. Shepard laughed softly.

“No, this is fine,” she said. “Maybe humans scare you, but I'm starting to like turians just fine. Who knew you guys were cuddlers?”

“Shh. That's classified military intel.” Pleasure, exhaustion, contentedness, his heart full to aching—he felt a little drunk. “Don't want me to get executed by the Hierarchy.”

“Definitely don't want that. You know me,” she said, her fingers running lightly over his colony markings. “I wouldn't get anywhere without you watching my back.”

Garrus closed his eyes and pressed his mouth plates against her neck in the closest thing he could manage to a human kiss. “'Die for the Cause,' Shepard. It's what we're for.”

“No.” Her touch stopped on his face, resting lightly against the scarred portion. Was it his imagination, or was there a slight hitch in her voice? “ _Live_ for the cause, Garrus. That's how humans do it, and this is a human-run operation, so I swear by God if you die for the cause I'll kill you myself.”

“Shepard …”

“That's an order, Vakarian.”

And she didn't believe humans scared him? Omega still lurked in the back of his mind, as Alchera no doubt did in hers. It took a lot more, he thought, to live for the cause than to die for it.

But an order was an order, so he raised himself up on his arms until they were face-to-face again, and he kissed her and felt her arms wind around his neck, and she smiled and hitched a leg over his hip and he was prepared to admit that, for a little while longer, he felt no fear at all.


End file.
